Gentlemen and Players

At St Oswald's, a long-established boys' grammar school in the north of England, a new year has just begun. For the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world; and Roy Straitley, the eccentric veteran Latin master, is finally - reluctantly - contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs.

Blueeyedboy

Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown, and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer. Blueeyedboy is the brilliant novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems.

The Evil Seed

It's never easy to face the fact that a man you once loved passionately has found the girl of his dreams, as Alice discovers when Joe introduces her to his new girlfriend Ginny. Jealous, Alice is repelled by Ginny - an ethereal beauty with a sinister group of friends. Then Alice finds an old diary hidden away in Ginny's room and reads about a mysterious, bewitching woman, Rosemary Virginia Ashley, buried in Grantchester churchyard half a century ago - buried but far from forgotten.

Birdcage Walk

It is1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Diner believes that Lizzie's independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him.

This Must Be the Place

A reclusive ex-film star living in the wilds of Ireland, Claudette Wells is a woman whose first instinct, when a stranger approaches her home, is to reach for her shotgun. Why is she so fiercely protective of her family, and what made her walk out of her cinematic career when she had the whole world at her feet? Her husband Daniel, reeling from a discovery about a woman he last saw twenty years ago, is about to make an exit of his own. It is a journey that will send him off-course, far away from the life he and Claudette have made together.

Summary Justice

The last time Tess de Vere saw William Benson, she was a law student on work experience. He was a 21-year-old, led from the dock of the Old Bailey to begin a life sentence for murder. He'd said he was innocent. She'd believed him. Sixteen years later Tess overhears a couple of hacks mocking a newcomer to the London Bar, a no-hoper with a murder conviction, running his own show from an old fishmonger's in Spitalfields.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live. Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world....

The Gustav Sonata

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland where the horrors of the Second World War seem distant. He adores his mother, but she treats him with bitter severity, disapproving especially of his intense friendship with Anton, the Jewish boy at school. A gifted pianist, Anton is tortured by stage fright; only in secret games with Gustav does his imagination thrive. But Gustav is taught that he must develop a hard shell, 'like a coconut', to protect the softness inside - just like the hard shell perfected by his country to protect its neutrality.

Unravelling Oliver

Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children's books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and beats her into a coma. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story.

The Heart's Invisible Furies

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

A Lesson in Dying

Who hanged the headmaster in the playground on the night of the school Hallowe'en party? Almost everyone in Heppleburn either hated or feared the viper-tongued Harold Medburn. Inspector Ramsay is convinced it was the headmaster's enigmatic wife, but Jack Robson, school governor and caretaker, is determined to prove her innocence. With the help of his restless, enthusiastic daughter, Patty, Jack digs into the secrets of Heppleburn, and uncovers a cesspit - of lies, adultery, blackmail and madness.

The Child

When a paragraph in an evening newspaper reveals a decades-old tragedy, most readers barely give it a glance. But for three strangers, it's impossible to ignore. For one woman it's a reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to her. For another it's the dangerous possibility that her darkest secret is about to be discovered. And for a third, a journalist, it's the first clue in a hunt to uncover the truth. The Child's story will be told.

The Muse

On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a job as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. Although Quick takes Odelle into her confidence and unlocks a potential she didn't know she had, she remains a mystery - no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery.

His Bloody Project

A brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of 17-year-old Roderick Macrae. There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path? Presented as a collection of documents, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers, which offer conflicting impressions, throwing Macrae's motive and his sanity into question.

Sleep, Pale Sister

Henry Chester, a domineering and puritanical Victorian artist, is in search of the perfect model. In nine-year-old Effie he finds her. Ten years later, lovely, childlike and sedated, Effie seems the ideal wife. But something inside her is about to awaken. Drawn by her lover, Mose, into a dangerous underworld of intrigue and blackmail, she meets Fanny Miller, the brothel-keeper, and her shadowy daughter, Marta - murdered ten years ago on the day of Henry's weekly visit...

The Allegations

On the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's Operation Millpond have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault.

The Party

Martin Gilmour is an outsider. When he wins a scholarship to Burtonbury School, he doesn't wear the right clothes or speak with the right kind of accent. But then he meets the dazzling, popular and wealthy Ben Fitzmaurice and gains admission to an exclusive world. Soon Martin is enjoying tennis parties and Easter egg hunts at the Fitzmaurice family's estate, as Ben becomes the brother he never had.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

England,1976. Mrs Creasy is missing, and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, 10-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined.

Publisher's Summary

After 30 years at St Oswald's Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its clowns, its rebels, its underdogs, its 'Brodie' boys who, whilst of course he doesn't have favourites, hold a special place in an old teacher's heart.

But every so often there's a boy who doesn't fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy with hidden shadows inside. With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new broom has arrived at the venerable school, bringing PowerPoint, sharp suits and even sixth-form girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist this march to the future, a shadow from his past is stirring. A boy who even 20 years on haunts his teacher's dreams. A boy capable of bad things.

I loved this! Skilfully drip-fed to reveal the darkness, two narrative voices tell this tale of apparently buried scandal at St Oswald's Grammar School in fictional Malbry. One is Roy Straitley old-school Latin teacher who peppers his account with Latin lines, fiercely loyal to the school and his special 'Brodie boys' which are his life; and Ziggy, a boy who spent only a short time at St Oswald's but whose evil seeps through everything that happened there from that time so many years ago. The audiobook voices are just right: Straitley's strictly moral, out-dated mind-set conveyed by Stephen Pacey, and Ziggy's deluded, frightening and evil manipulation conveyed in Ewan Goddard's much higher-pitched wheedling.

St Oswald's has been enveloped and almost destroyed by terrible events which are slowly revealed: the death of a pupil and the imprisonment of a much-loved member of staff. A Crisis Team is brought in to save the school - representing all the management speak and high tech business practices loathed by Straitley. But worst of all, the new Head-in-a-suit is Harrrington, an ex-pupil whom Straitley had always disliked and distrusted. The new management is all for moving forward, but Ziggy's narrative gradually reveals the truth behind all the hideous events at St Oswald's, ensuring that the past events, far from being forgotten, continue to fester and erupt into jealousy-fuelled violence involving an increasing circle of victims - or are they perpetrators?.

It's a very complex plot and to give more away would spoil the listening, but it is no coincidence that Operation Yewtree blew up whilst Joanne Harris was writing the book. Dark themes are explored. What do you really know about what goes on in the darkness of your friends' minds? How can the abuser and the victim become entangled and change roles? Can the church, therapy or Juries be relied on to produce the truth?

Listen to Gentlemen & Players first. These two stories are exceptionally well written and told. Best I've read/heard for some years. Highly recommended. Would make an outstanding and gripping TV series.

Everything that I loved about the first. Joanne Harris has a great ability to keep her characters engaging and the storyline flows with complete ease.

What other book might you compare Different Class to, and why?

I cannot compare really, as the title says a Different Class. Unlike many other crime novels, this one did not suddenly jump to an unbelievable conclusion to wrap it up. Well done Ms Harris

Have you listened to any of Steven Pacey and Ewan Goddard ’s other performances? How does this one compare?

I adore Steven Pacey's narrations and will read anything by him, at first I was a bit concerned about Ewan Goddard's but he actually did a really good job, and I thought the combination of them both worked well.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

No, because that would be a spoiler. Audible think of a better question than this<br/><br/>I was moved when it finished as I wanted to listen to more

Any additional comments?

Love love love. Brilliantly written, superb narration, great story. I do hope we get to hear from the Latin Master again............and soon

How disappointing.The novel started off as being so charming, humorous and promising. The unsettling backstory and shared narration only seemed partially clumsy.But then- all events became well, silly, and far fetched and so stereotypically drawn that any semblance of plot vanished.I loved smiling wryly at the beginning and resented struggling through to the end.

Joanne Harris had me from the start with this one. The characters, especially Mr Straightly were so believable. Narrated superbly. I feel I know St Oswalds intimately. I didn't want it to end. More of this wonderful school drama please Ms Harris.